• Families The death of Constantine leaves Queen Sofia without her great emotional support
  • Profile Irene of Greece, the peculiar princess: she does not go to hairdressers, does not wear jewelry and does not give importance to her outfits

When Princess Irene, after the death of her mother Queen Federica, settled in Zarzuela in 1981, few could suspect the weight she would acquire over time in the Family. Single, alone in the world stateless and penniless, because the Greek socialist government confiscated her assets and stripped her of passport and nationality, at first she remained cloistered in her chambers most of the time so as not to disturb the Bourbon family intimacy. Something that angered King Juan Carlos, architect of his reception in the palace. "I have brought her to accompany Sofi and she does not leave her room," protested the Monarch.

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Much has changed today the situation of the princess, who this May 11 has turned 81 years old, and little by little she has been acquiring more weight in the Family, until she becomes an irreplaceable member.

Conciliatory and enormously discreet, tensions and disagreements are put aside when it comes to "Aunt Pecu" as she is affectionately nicknamed, because she is so "peculiar" that she professes the Buddhist faith and came to live a decade in an ashram in India, in Madras, under the orders of the guru Mahadevan; She is also a vegetarian, does not smoke or drink alcohol, does not dye her hair and receives the day practicing meditation.

Doña Sofía and her sister Irene, in the recent Holy Week in Palma.GTRES

Despite her atypical personality, she has the respect of Don Juan Carlos, because she never intervened in her marital disagreements with Doña Sofía, and her nephews, Don Felipe and the Infantas Elena and Cristina adore her and are eternally grateful for having become her mother's greatest staff. Even Queen Letizia, little given to lavish herself in celebrations of the Bourbons, did not hesitate to go last year to thefiesta that was organized for her 80th birthday in the gardens of Zarzuela with King Felipe and the Infanta Sofia, who they say physically resembles Irene when she was young.

"The loneliness of Doña Sofía would be tremendous if her sister were not by her side," says a source from the Royal Family's environment. Death on January 11 last King Constantine, of whom the Queen was flesh and nail, with Don Juan Carlos, with whom he had reconciled in old age, in exile from Abu Dhabi since 2020 and with no signs of returning, to which is added the disagreements between Don Felipe and his sisters, Irene has become her older sister's "other me." Both sisters share almost everything, especially their vocation for solidarity, as they have their respective NGOs, the Reina Sofía Foundation, now focused on food banks, and Mundo en Armonía, to which Irene donated all of the 900,000 euros of compensation she received from the Greek Government for the expropriation of her assets. They also have a similar mystical vision of life, that of Irene within the purest Buddhist orthodoxy, they are passionate about the occult and the exoteric, they do not taste the flesh and are fans of natural therapies.

The Sisters, in 1961.GTRES

A tireless traveler, before Irene frequently traveled to Athens where, according to the Greek press, she maintained an apartment in Plaza Mavili, but now she stays almost all the time in Zarzuela, where she has her own wing equipped with a room with bathroom, dressing room and a small living room. If before it was not usual to see her publicly, now she usually accompanies her sister in discreet background to some acts, especially concerts, the passion of both, because Irene is a piano virtuoso. It is also fixed in Marivent in summer and Easter, as was verified in the last Easter holidays, when we saw Doña Sofía with Irene on Holy Monday in the concert that presided over the Emerita in the cathedral organized by Proyecto Hombre, and also in the procession of the Crist de la Sang through the streets of Palma.

  • Queen Sofia
  • Juan Carlos I
  • Greece

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